[mananaysiempre]

A reminder that GNU Units still exists, e.g.

  $ units
  Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (USD base) on 2021-01-17 
  3677 units, 109 prefixes, 114 nonlinear units
  
  You have: 4 amu * (1000 nm/s)^2
  You want: joules
          * 6.6421563e-39
          / 1.5055352e+38

  You have: ^D

It’s slightly less DWIMish (you have to say “atomicmassunits”, “atomicmassunit”, “amu”, or “u”, not “atomic mass units”) and somewhat awkward as a separate tool, but then resorting to your web browser for unit conversions is awkward in a different way. Non-interactive invocations, like units VALUE-OR-UNIT UNIT, work as well.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/units/

[neltnerb]

Thanks for the reminder =)

Alas, I often have to do these kinds of calculations on a random publicish computer or my phone and Google's converter is platform-independent. But not using Google services when feasible is certainly net good.

And of course my TI-89 had equally good unit conversion for practical purposes (since you can define your own units) so somehow the world is still playing catchup to a calculator from the 90s...

[mananaysiempre]

If you’re organized enough to have space for Termux on your phone, it does wonders in this department. I feel silly every time I punch Python code into that teensy touch keyboard, but damned if I know anything else that has a better input UI and isn’t orders of magnitude less versatile. (Maple Calculator and microMathematics are still on the “there was an attempt” level, in my experience.)

[kragen]

There's an Android GUI for a units(1) calculator in F-Droid. I have it on my phone.

[acjohnson55]

The TI-89 was/is an amazing device.

[BenjiWiebe]

+1 for 'units'. I like it for conversion between millilightseconds and miles, to get the theoretical best-case latency between two places.

i.e. if it's x milliseconds ping, it can't be more than m miles away.

[pxx]

You have a missing factor of two.